Final Hours
by Jomber
Summary: The final hours of a captain and his comrades on Mar Sara.


The alarm blared loudly over the gunfire from the men spraying bullets inside the bunkers. Massive amounts of Zerg came barreling down through the canyon on their hind legs and upon the hastily made scrap metal barricades attached to the side of the bunkers. A large group of zerglings quickly surrounded one of the outlaying bunkers and made quick work of the barricade, using their razor-sharp teeth and claws as they began to tear their way into the bunker.

"We're surrounded!" Shouted one marine

"Where the hell do we run to!" Shouted another, while popping off a round into another zergling's head.

"We can't!"

"_Shit__!_ They broke through!" The marine was quickly pinned down and ripped apart by the flood of Zerg pouring through the one jagged gash, and other gashes still being pried open.

A radio cracked to life, "Bunker Alpha 3-39 has gone down! Bunker Zeta 2-57 reports banelings! Repeat, banelings are inbound!" Over the horizon a storm of bloated, acid-filled banelings rolled down onto the sand practically kicking up a dust storm. This was the situation on Mar Sara, just hours before the inevitable happened.

The outpost was a rally point for any survivors to be picked up and lifted to a safer, and more defended fortification, where they would continue onto evacuation ships suited for space travel. Unfortunately, the base was running into... issues. Zerg had begun their onslaught on the outpost, which had already been under recent attacks and was left half repaired. Metal was simply slapped onto holes without real thought as the sirens rang out, signaling another upcoming attack. So this was the situation, and the first Sons of Korhal dropships with armed support, medical supplies, and of course, room for any survivors, hadn't even arrived yet.

Sustained gunfire continued as flashes of light showed clearly in the dark sky. The large group of banelings were coming extremely close to the outpost. The marines in the front bunker looked up at the banelings, and saw only one possible outcome. Suddenly, a huge blast of red energy shot through the swirling clouds and into the large baneling mass, causing acid and guts to spray everywhere. The Korhal battlecruiser dubbed "The Stinger" descended through the clouds, raining lasers and bullets into the swarm of Zerg that continued to beat relentlessly down upon the front lines, wave after wave. It was like a never-ending storm.

"Captain!" Jacob cried out, "The ground forces are slowly being overwhelmed! Our anti-air batteries are still struggling to keep these Zerg fliers off of the ship!" Jacob was the Captain's second in command, more like his apprentice. He was tall and had black hair in a neat and combed fashion. He wore a black coat, high in quality, over his white buttoned shirt.

"Calm down boy!" Captain Madden said sternly. "If you want to make it out alive, then you better calm down." He wore a gray coat and a captain's hat on his head. It was evident that he hadn't shaved in a while. Captain Madden started pacing across the control room. The control room consisted of a central podium in which three screens sat upon evenly spaced. Flight data flickered across it, along with several models and graphs. With out warning a large gun, which was positioned right below the main window in front of the control room, promptly shot a flying mutalisk, spraying alien gunk all over the window.

"Geez! That was close!" Jacob shuddered. He started pacing back and forth in the opposite direction of the captain, while fidgeting with a pencil.

"I said clam down." Captain Madden said coldly. "I need your attention and focus. We're all that's keeping the Zerg from completely overrunning this base! I can't have my second in command panic on me!"

"Sorry sir, I just..." Suddenly, the radio cracked to life again.

"Anyone! Please help!" said a voice. "We were separated from the group and we can't get to the rally point! Please! Our coordinates are.." The two listen carefully and sit very still, while Jacob's tapping with the pencil grows more faster and frantic.

"Sir! Captain! We need to help them!"

"We can't! If we leave this outpost then they will both die!"

"But sir! There must be something we can-" The radio buzzed again.

"Mom? Are we gonna die?" A young girl's voice echoed in the background.

"No sweetie... Help is coming..." A mother's voice cooed. "It's alright, calm down."

"Sir!" Jacob yelled. "They have _kids__!_ We have to help them!"

"I'm sorry." The captain sorrowfully said. "But we can't."

"But sir!" Jacob protested.

"I'm sorry Jacob! But we can't. We just can't. Not with all the Zerg already breaking through the line." He looked up at him. "If I could, I would do it." Jacob looked into his eyes and saw no way around it. He slowly turned back and silently watched the Zerg's ground force slowly retreating as the ship did it's job, inch by inch, corpse by corpse, bullet by bullet. The ship's anti-air batteries kept most Zerg fliers away, but the ship would occasionally jolt from the few shots that managed to land. Jacob took the radio with him as he watched, hoping that it would come back to life with good news, that the group had survived, but all that came were reports of bunkers either being overrun or had successfully fought off the Zerg in their specific sector.

Suddenly though, a blue light shined in the swirling, dusty sky and just hung there. The radio crackled to life with a chilling message. "Abandon the planet! The Protoss have arrived! They seem to be charging some sort of weapon! Repeat! Abandon the planet!"

Jacob raced over to the radio, "We still have survivors needing evacuation! How much time do we have!"

"What the hell man! You were supposed to have evacuated everyone three hours ago! Look, this thing is going to blow any second, and if you don't get your asses out of there, you're all gonna die!"

"Three hours ago!" Captain Madden shouted across the room. "But we were sent in just one hour ago! What is the meaning of this!" He slammed his fist on the desk. "Dammit! Answer me!"

"This is not good!" Jacob panicked, "This is not good!"

"Get yourself together boy!" snapped Madden. "We can still escape, but I want to know why the hell we were sent down here when the planet was already supposed to be abandoned. None of this makes sense."

"Sir! Captain! Our engines! The power supply got cut off somehow! Only our tertiary thrusters are working!"

"Dammit! I'll take a small squad and an engineer to the engine room. You stay here and keep an eye on things." Captain Madden motioned over a few crew members. He stormed out the door and hit the emergency switch behind him.

The underpowered engine room was dark and dim. Light only beamed through a small hole in the back of the ship.

"A mutalisk must've shot out the engine." a marine murmured. The engine room consisted of a large metallic structure in the middle of the large cluttered and crammed area. Random tools and scraps hung lying on the ground, scattered haphazardly around the room.

"We have casualties!" another marine shouted. Three dead engineers lied around the punctured hole.

"What's this?" Captain Madden asked. There were other bodies that weren't near the hole. Quickly, something poked its head out.

"Shit! Broodlings! A brood lord shot some broodlings in here!" he started firing at the dark blob with his revolver, while it started darting around the room. With a small tap-tap noise, more broodlings came out of the cracks and corpses of the room.

"Get to the exit and create a choke point!" Madden commanded. He retreated back to the exit while marines continued to fire at what they saw.

"I can't see anything in this light!" a marine shouted.

"Gah!" The engineer screamed as he was knocked down by broodlings that quickly pinned him to the ground, and began to devour him.

"Casualty!" a marine yelled.

"Dammit! Not the engineer!" Captain Madden yelled in shock and fury. "Someone retrieve his tool-set!"

"Covering fire!" a marine commanded as he stepped forward while firing upon the broodlings, still swarming over of what was left of the dead engineer.

"Watch it!" Captain Madden said. "Don't wreck the equipment!" The marine snatched the tool-set, which was a thin metallic case with a latch attached on the one side.

"I think I shot the last one!" a marine sighed with relief.

"It's not over yet!" The captain snapped. "We still need to repair this thing... _if_ we can repair this." He grabbed the radio attached to his belt. "The engineer got killed! How do we repair this damn thing!"

Jacob responded on the opposite end, "Died! How did he die!"

"Broodlings. Listen boy, I need an engineer on the radio _now__._"

"Right sir. Hey! You there! Get on the radio. And you, start making your way towards the engine room, just in case."

"What is it captain?" A deep voice boomed from the radio.

"The engine isn't working!"

"I know that, but I can't tell you anything unless you tell me what you see."

"Right... the engine itself seems unharmed."

"That's good, but the engine room _lost_ power, is there any power modules that were damaged?"

"Power _what__!_" Captain Madden questioned, having absolutely no clue of what he was doing.

"It looks like a blue, glowing cylinder." The engineer replied. Madden's eyes darted around the room.

"Shit! A wall got blown out and one of them seems to have fallen out!" A round, faintly glowing power module laid on the ground next to the same, and only hole, where the sole light source shown through. "It's barely glowing!"

"More Zerg fliers incoming!" Jacob's voice rang out from the speakers. Sure enough the ship starting shaking violently as more and more Zerg mutalisks and corruptors starting advancing in a wild fashion upon the ship. "I'm g-getting reports th-that the main b-bridge has t-taken m-major d-damage! Sir we c-can't take m-much more of th-this." Jacob's voice was grave, and he stuttered throughout the sentence. "I'm g-getting no r-response f-from the o-other engineer s-sent to y-you."

"Dammit..." Captain Madden muttered. He grabbed the half-working power module, and took a deep breath. "Is there anyway I can fix this?"

"Not with the wall blown out." The engineer reluctantly said. "The only other way would leave us with minimal energy input. If you garb some heavy wiring and attach it to the engine and the door panel, we could distribute the energy from other systems to the engine."

"It's our only shot!" Captain Madden started searching through all the boxes and random equipment scattered on the ground. "Hah! Found some!" The wire was thick and heavy. The entire squad, or what was left of it, had to all lift together to move it anywhere. The wire was inserted into the socket on the engine case, while the other end was inserted into the control panel next to the door. The engine room's lights flickered on, and the engine roared to life.

"Good job captain!" Jacob cheered. "Careful getting back."

Captain Madden stormed into the the control room.

"The bridge has a few holes that need to be patched, but if we seal it off we should be able to get into space." He rushed to the front of the room and took control of the ship. The ship started to ascend when the blue light that hung in the air for so long, suddenly dropped into a long beam.

"What the!" Jacob cried out.

"_Dammit__!_ Keep going! We just have to race this thing." Captain Madden shouted. The beam touched the ground and started spreading outwards and upwards, across the land and back into the atmosphere. The energy started plowing it's way upward toward the ship.

"Keep going!" Light enveloped the ship.

"_Shit__!_" The light started pouring through gaps that formed into the disintegrating ship. No radio contact from The Stinger was ever heard since.


End file.
